


hunger

by foundCarcosa



Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King, Fable 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover Pairings, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, M/M, Sorry Not Sorry, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-28
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-05-16 20:50:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5840536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world-jumping mage's life was irrevocably changed when the curséd son of White and Red latched onto him and refused to let go. It's still changing, and so are they.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hunger

**Author's Note:**

> My best attempt at giving excuses for this work of pure sin:
> 
> I roleplay both Mordred Deschain and Garth on tumblr (URLs: mordreddeschain + saigarth), and taking obscenely detailed liberties with canon is pretty much the foundation of all My plots. Our intrepid Will-using todash-traveller is therefore known and loved by Roland Deschain, the gunslinging protagonist of Stephen King's magnum opus The Dark Tower, and by a crazy stroke of ka-trickery has become known and loved by the son of Roland [and three others].
> 
> In the actual plot, this little tale of questionable moral fiber doesn't happen. But maybe it does, on some level of the Tower. Why not, right?
> 
> Also, blame bisexualulfric/ladysparrow [at] tumblr. I'm not letting her get away with not being implicated in this. I'm sick enough to imagine and write it, but she's sick enough to want to read it afterwards.
> 
> If _you're_ still reading this far... enjoy! :p

...So it came to pass that Garth reclaimed his former home from the Albion Historical Society; he offered plenty of gold, more than he'd given to purchase it the first time, but they readily refused the sum. _"Anything for the great Hero of Will!"_ He'd almost been embarrassed enough at the praise to force the gold upon them.

Brightwood Tower was much as he had left it, for good and ill -- the stone floors still littered with broken glass and heaps of ash, the upper floor in shambles that brought flashes of memory from his confrontation with Lucien's Commandant -- and he set to cleaning with a fervent diligence that surprised even him.

He'd enjoyed the Tower, but he hadn't expected to love it.

He had returned to Albion with the son of his greatest friend and greatest enemy in tow, the ageless were-spider that had latched onto him in the deadlights beyond time and space and followed him into every world since. He'd seen Mordred Deschain as a burden at best and a hindrance at worst, his constant dependence and hunger for Garth's attention making it increasingly difficult for the mage to do anything else but tend to him. "If not for my love for your White Father," he'd bite out through clenched teeth, thinking, _I should have killed him. Roland was right. I should have killed him and been done with it._

Through wintry Skyrim and dusty Solstheim, this was his abiding thought. Through the Fade that pulled them into stark Tevinter, through their journey to fair Ferelden, Mordred gained strength, form, clarity; he learnt to speak of things that were not just seething words of hunger and pain, learnt to be inquisitive and interpret information, learnt to stand upright and walk beside Garth instead of lurk behind him with his spindly fingers entwined in the mage's cloak.

Passing through the thin places at the fortress of Ostagar and the sickly Fallow Mire, he almost lost Mordred. It occurred to him then, in fighting back the wretched and the undead, that perhaps he didn't want to.

The shamanic Chasind elders of the Korcari Wilds ushered them back to Albion, and Garth had nearly fallen to his knees and kissed the flowering earth. Mordred had watched, avidly, as the emotions flickered across the mage's normally stoic face, had drunk them in, and somewhere between that and their visit with the Seer of the Spire, something had shifted in him, had unfolded and revealed itself.

Sparrow had tolerated Mordred well, but she never dropped her suspicion of him, and Garth supposed that was for the best -- someone had to keep a safe mental distance from the shapeshifter with the split personality, and he knew himself well enough to know that in this case, that someone wasn't him. When they returned to Albion, Garth spent one blissful night with his One and their children, and set out the next day to prepare Mordred a home of his own.

The enchantments that Garth had weaved into Brightwood Tower still held fast, unbroken by the battles with Spire Guards and Shards, not weakened by the passage of time. Within these wards he weaved new ones with blood and Will, spells of Old Kingdom origin, spells of Samarkin origin, until the Tower hummed with magic. And throughout it all, Mordred watched, and something in his eyes unsettled Garth to his core.

On the seventh day, the mage brought Mordred to the door of the Tower, and drew them open. "This is to be your home while we are here. I have made it safe for you." He did not add that the Tower would also keep Albion safe from _him._

"You will stay with me." It wasn't phrased like a question, but Garth was used to that.

He hesitated for a moment, avoiding Mordred's piercing blue gaze. "No."

Mordred stared at him until Garth met his gaze again. "You will stay with me." His voice held less conviction this time -- less conviction and a healthy dose of fear.

"Mordred--"

"Why would you leave me here!" Mordred looked around wildly, clamped his hands around an earthenware pot, and hurled it to the floor. Garth winced. "Why! Why would you leave me!"

_"Mordred!"_ The force behind his rebuke stilled Mordred in his search for something else to break, and he stopped in mid-reach, trembling like a plucked lyre string.  
"I'm sorry. I will visit, and I will bring you food, and I will not let anything harm you. But I cannot have you hounding my every step forever. I need to spend time with Sparrow and the children. ...Without you."

"No!" Howling like a wounded animal, Mordred wrenched open the doors of the tower and tried to run, but Garth was hot on his heels, and grabbed him around the waist before he could make it down the stairs and out of reach. He'd had practice -- the shapeshifter had one hell of a fight-or-flight reflex, and when one failed, the other was always imminent. 

He struggled viciously for a moment, but Garth held on tight, his arms locked around Mordred's narrow ribcage, and eventually howling dissolved into sobbing, his helpless fury giving way to the root of itself -- a feeling of being betrayed, a feeling of unavoidable loss.

"Be still, son of Roland," Garth spoke in the voice that Mordred loved best, and the sobs quieted into shuddering breaths as Mordred strained to listen, to drink, to be whole again. "I am not leaving yet."

* * *

Dusk settles upon them like a velvet blanket, and by the soft glow of lamplight Garth prepares rabbit stew -- he sets the tender chunks of meat separately for Mordred, and leaves the rest of the stew for himself. Being fully grown, the shapeshifter didn't need to eat flesh so much anymore. Now, he mostly feeds off the energy of his guardian.

When supper is finished, Mordred explores the tower, his spidery hands splaying over the walls and furniture, absorbing the impressions he finds, his eyes wide and his jaw slack as he drinks in everything. Garth watches him, and absorbs his own impressions -- the jut of shoulder blades that reminds him of clipped wings, the stringy black hair that would drag the floor in impossible tangled waves if Garth didn't cut it shoulder-length every once in a while, the network of veins under pale, cool flesh and the sinewy musculature that fills him out, makes him wiry and dense and strong despite his long-limbed thinness.

Mordred stops short at the landing of the topmost floor, where Garth had once resided, where he would now reside. He looks down at the mage, who lingers on the landing below. Something in his eyes, something more hungry than usual, makes Garth uneasy.

"You are not leaving."

"Not _tonight,"_ Garth reminds him quietly.

He seems to struggle then, his throat working but no words coming forth, his eyes glazing as he tries to make language work for him. Garth closes the distance between them, coming up the stairs and guiding him into the room, towards the bed with its inviting warmth.

"Sit," he instructs, and takes his own advice, leaning against the wall in the middle of the mattress, his legs stretched out in front of him, his hands folded in his lap. "Tell me."

Mordred perches hesitantly on the edge of the bed, and the uncertainty is what intrigues Garth -- uncertainty in a creature that didn't hesitate to take what he wanted whenever it presented itself for the taking.  
"You do not love me," he finally says, haltingly.

Garth sighs inaudibly. "No."

Mordred glares at him. "You lie to me."

Taken aback, the mage can only stare back.

"You lie. You must love me. Long time, we travel. You feed me. You protect me. You don't let them hurt me. Sometimes you hurt me, and you look sad. You don't want me to see that. But I see."

Garth opens his mouth to speak, to offer some protest or defence, but Mordred brings his hand down in a slashing motion, his brow drawing up tight. Garth closes his mouth.

"I watch you fix this place. Long time, you work. Hard work. Root work. You say it is for me. To keep me safe. Why. Why would you do this."

The expectant look he gives then is Garth's cue to answer. "Because I promised I would take care of you, and I am a man of my word. Because Roland said that if you attached yourself to me, I'd either have to kill you or be stuck with you, and I am weary of killing."

"That is all."

"That is all, Mordred."

In the silence that follows, Mordred scratches absently at his arms, fingernails drawing pink furrows in white flesh, and Garth feels the weight of Mordred's thinking, the weight of his confusion, and the hunger that lurks behind all of that -- hunger of a different stripe, redder and thicker and hotter, like blood fresh from the artery. When Garth touches it, probes it, he feels warm all over, his skin prickling.

He doesn't like it. But that, like his answer to Mordred, is only a half-truth.

"I want you to love me. I do everything for you. To love me. To... not leave me." Mordred's hands have curled into fists, and his face is flushed. "I become like you want me to be. I am quiet when it hurts. But you hate me, still." He shoves at Garth, then punches, and when the strikes continue Garth gives in and grabs his wrists, pulling him in, giving him what he wants. "Then I will hate you too!"

Mordred struggles like a frightened cat, his hands hooking into claws and raking at Garth's face and chest, his teeth bared and hair falling into his face, blinding him. When his momentum seems to flag, Garth lets him go, and he clutches at Garth's tunic to stay upright, breathing in great, desperate gulps.

"All you do is fight me." Garth is surprised at how bleak his voice sounds. "Take from me, and demand more, and fight me when I do not give. You are not easy to love, son of Los."

"Do not call me that!"

"I call you as you are." But Mordred is weeping, silently, and the reproachful look he gives Garth makes the mage regret his words, as deserved as they may have been. "I don't want to fight with you. I will be gone in the morning, and I'd hoped to make that change easier on you."

"Don't leave me alone," Mordred pleads.

"Theresa will watch over you."

"I don't want _her!_ I want you."

"I _can't,_ Mordred."

He struggles with himself, and Garth watches the fury flush his features and tighten his fists before something stronger than childlike rage asserts itself, much like it had earlier, when he'd tried to run. His body loosens, his fists uncurling, and a stillness falls over him -- the stillness of despair. And Garth wants to take it back, wants to give in, and that instinctive desire to shield Mordred from pain makes him wonder how much of all he'd said that night was a lie.

Instead, he takes Mordred's arms and brings them around himself, and curls his own arms around the thin and tired body, and Mordred sinks into the embrace in a way that makes Garth think he'll be quiet for the night, he'll fall asleep and it'll all be done, but he'd forgotten about the hunger, the red and thick and hot hunger that had been lurking, waiting for Mordred to drop his guard.

Mordred becomes aware first of the lines of his body, and how they contrast against the lines of the body he leans against. He couldn't remember ever noticing that before. He had boundaries, a defined form, and if he shifted one way or another, the angles of his body fit in different ways against Garth's. He shifts experimentally, his head finding the hollow of Garth's collarbone. 

Garth becomes aware first of the chill in Mordred's skin, because it is starting to ebb, replaced by a searching warmth. The body in his arms moves, and he feels Mordred's breath on his throat. In that moment, he becomes aware of his form as well, the boundaries of his body, the angles and planes and the places where Mordred fits.

Mordred lifts his head, looks Garth in the eyes. "I _want_ something."

Garth's gut tightens, and he swallows. He had never prepared for this. "I know you do."

"I don't know what it is."

"I know you don't." He wants to tell him to ignore it, to push it back, but he knows better. Hunger denied became obsession, a gnawing and indignant force that blotted out everything else except itself, and that was worse, much worse.  
But the alternative...

_Would it be so awful? To cross this last line in a series of line-crossing, to give him this last thing and then be gone?  
But then he'll want it again, and again. And that is unacceptable._

And, in the most quiet of mind-voices, _Why, exactly, is it unacceptable?_

A stricken feeling comes over him. _Oh, Gan. How lost am I?_

"You know." Mordred's voice is both accusing and pleading. He sits up, and Garth's arms fall to his sides. "It hurts, _burns,_ I can't think. I only want. You _know_ it."

"I can't... I can't give you that, Mordred."

"Why not!" He snatches at Garth's tunic, digs in, so that he can feel it through the fabric, the bite of nails in flesh. His blood quickens, and not in the way he expects. "It _hurts!"_

Garth's hand flies up before he can think, flies up and takes hold of Mordred's face, two fingers and the thumb clamping around his chin and squeezing. His eyes are hard and almost furious as they lock with Mordred's, and Mordred's pupils dilate as they drink it in. And perhaps Garth drinks something in as well, because when he opens his mouth to speak, to rebuke the shapeshifter for tempting him, to rebuke him for everything that Garth couldn't admit to himself, no words come out -- instead, he thinks, _funny, I never noticed how pretty his mouth is, pink and flushed and his lips always parted,_ and well, he hadn't known those parted lips would yield so easily if he pressed his own against them, either, but he knew now.

His mind is strangely numb when he pulls back, his breath trapped in his throat and his eyes wide and slightly glazed. Mordred stares at him, their stunned expressions mirrors of each other.

"I..."

"You..."

"...didn't mean to..."

_"...again..."_

And because he is already damned, he relents and does it again, and then again-- because Mordred wants it, which is a good excuse; and because it feels less and less wrong with every time, which is the truth-- and when the numbness falls away it is replaced by a riot of sensation. At first Mordred is soft and yielding, but as his body answers to the call of instinct he learns to press back, to become more than a receiver but also a giver, to ebb and flow with the tide of the kiss until he loses himself in it. The hunger grows, pouring into his limbs and pooling in his belly, and the boundaries between him and Garth are lost again, melted by a rising heat that frightens and thrills him in equal measure.

But there is a part of him that does not melt, but instead grows firmer, more defined, and he moves to accommodate it, but his shifting makes it more insistent, makes it _hurt,_ and he cries out, but the sound is swallowed by the mouth that is locked on his own. Garth is too far gone to notice, one hand clamped around Mordred's neck and the other buried in his hair, the embodiment of a dam breaking. Still, he eventually feels Mordred's body shift, feels the restlessness coiled in it, and breaks the contact to allow him freedom of movement.

Mordred had never seen him like this before -- lips parted and eyes glazed, the way the shapeshifter usually looked when he was drinking in some impression or some emotion; the pulsing of his lines was harsher now, more insistent, like the throbbing of that part of Mordred that wouldn't melt but grew harder instead. Entranced, Mordred watches him, drinks him in, and the hunger grows still; he follows its pull and straddles Garth, his knees planted on either side of him, and their torsos almost flush.

He struggles to speak, to articulate the pounding waves in his mind and the even more insistent pulse farther down, but there are no words.

"Gan forgive me," Garth whispers, his voice throatier than Mordred remembers, and pulls the shapeshifter in until their bodies are flush from chest to groin, and Mordred's mouth falls open in a surprised cry-- he can feel the hard, hungry pulse in the center of both of their bodies, and he can't imagine how anyone can stand it, ever, but it's no matter anymore, because the mage _understands_ this hunger, understands it _and_ feels it too, they are bonded by this hunger and its inevitable conclusion, and his hands feel so hot on the back of Mordred's neck and his lips feel so hot on the hollow of Mordred's throat and Mordred is learning that if he pushes his hips forward and then draws them back, and does it again, and does it again, that there's an ebb and flow that is so much more intense than the kiss was, a surging sensation that demands more and more, and at some point Mordred's eyes flutter closed and his body surrenders to the hungry grasping touch of his can calah, his guardian, his surrogate father, his lover, and it is good to surrender, too good, too good, he thinks he might--

He doesn't die, doesn't fly apart like he thinks he might, but it is an apt analogy for what happens, for his muscles drawing up so tight that they tremble with tension, for the electric pulse that starts deep within him and then rolls forward with the motion of his hips until it bursts free from his body, for his muscles suddenly releasing their tension and his mouth falling open in a shuddering cry, for the heat that pours out of him in wave after wave and for how much more intense it feels when Garth's arms convulse around him and he flies apart too, draws up tight and shudders in release, his breath gusting warm and humid against Mordred's chest.

"Know me no longer by my words," the mage murmurs dazedly, "but by this, which I give to thee..."

He barely registers Garth laying him down on the bed, getting up and returning with a warm, damp cloth, undressing him and cleaning him with sure and efficient hands; he knows that at some point the mage must have extinguished the lamp, because it becomes dark, and he knows that at some point the mage lies down beside him, exhausted in all ways, and falls asleep almost instantly. He knows that his fingers, his traitorous fingers, inch across the mattress to entwine with Garth's, just for a moment, just to know what it feels like.

And then he knows morning, the spill of sunlight over the bed, the rat-a-tat of woodpeckers and the trill of songbirds... and the place next to him where Garth had slept, now empty.

_Know me no longer by my words, but by this, which I give to thee._  
He knows he is irrevocably changed, and it should be good.   
He refuses to know the tears soaking the pillow underneath him.


End file.
